Parents accuse school management of fleecing

The parents of students studying at CT Public School on Friday alleged that the school management was unnecessarily charging fee for building maintenance and ID cards from their wards.

They said the management had already charged Rs 7,000 as annual fee besides Rs 2,000 as building maintenance charges.

Addressing a press conference, SK Sharma, a parent, said the school charged Rs 5,000 security fee from every student which was refunded after 15 years.

"The school management earns a huge amount of interest out of this. Depositing of security fee should be stopped. Why should we give a separate building maintenance fee of Rs 2000, when we are giving an annual fee of Rs 7,000 and Rs 4,500 as quarterly fee?" he said.

However, the parents insisted that they wanted the details of as why building maintenance fee was being charged if the school was already getting annual charges.

Sachin, another parent, said, "The school has 1,200 students. It collects more than Rs 1 crore in fees only. We want the management to show us the balance sheet of the past three years to check if they are facing any losses."

Besides, the parents objected to Rs 500 extra charges for printing material and Rs 500 for ID card. This time, the school will make Rs 36 lakh from extra charges from 1,200 students."

The parents said they had given in written to the school principal in response to which the management had offered Rs 1,000 concession in building maintenance fee to those students whose siblings were studying at the school.

They, however, made it clear that they would not pay any separate building maintenance fee.

The parents of students studying at other schools accompanied them. They urged the state authorities to interfere in the matter since there were no set parameters when it comes to hiking fees.

The parents threatened to approach to the high court if the management did not take back building maintenaince fee, printing charges and ID card fee.

School principal Ranjana Rajput said keeping the parents' demands in mind they had offered a 50% concession in building charges for the child whose sibling is already studying in the school.